The present invention relates to mirrors for school buses, trucks, vans or any vehicle and, in particular, mirrors for school buses which are mounted on the front of the buses and which are glare resistant while still providing large fields of view.
For decades, it has been known to fit school buses with mirrors mounted on the front fenders which provide very wide angle fields of view, enabling the bus drivers to carefully monitor the bus along the front and sides thereof. Providing such mirrors is necessary as a matter of the safety of our children.
Typically, such mirrors are spherical or nearly spherical in shape. Many are dome shaped, to achieve the wide field of view.
These mirrors are very well known in the art, as exemplified by the 1933 U.S. Pat. No. 1,905,623 to Deitz. Similar mirrors are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,436,372; 4,512,634; 5,005,963; 4,500,063; 4,938,578 and many other similar patents. The contents of the aforesaid patents are incorporated by reference herein.
While the mirrors of the prior art achieve their intended objectives of providing wide fields of view both in the horizontal and vertical (azimuth) directions, there are certain drawbacks to their use. Specifically, the inventor herein has determined that the provision of wide fields of view along the azimuth direction sometimes adversely affects the optimization of the operability of the mirror system.
Other prior art, dealing with the subject matter of vehicular mirrors and the subject of undesired light reflection, includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,311,253, 1,811,823; 2,514,989; 2,881,655; 3,764,201; 4,822,157; 5,589,984, as well as WO 8503136 dated July 1985 and German Patent 2148022 dated March 1973. The contents of the foregoing U.S. patents are incorporated by reference herein.